In 1602, the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands chartered the first commercial company, the Dutch East India Company, and, in so doing, initiated a new wave of globalization. Even though Dutch engagement in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans dates back to the 16th century, it was the dawn of the 17th century that brought the Dutch into the fold of the general movement of European expansion overseas and concomitant globalization.

This volume surveys the Dutch participation in, and contribution to, the process of globalization. At the same time, it reassesses the various ways Dutchmen fashioned themselves following the encounter and in the light of increasing dialogue with other societies across the world. As such, Exploring the Dutch Empire offers a new insight into the macro and micro worlds of the global Dutchman in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The result fills a gap in the historiography on empire and globalization, which has previously been dominated by British and, to a lesser extent, French and Spanish cases.

Preface
Catia Antunes and Jos Gommans

Introduction
Catia Antunes
PART I: AGENTS
1. South Asian Cosmopolitanism and the Dutch Microcosms in Seventeenth-Century Cochin (Kerala)
Jos Gommans
2. Negotiating Foreignness in the Ottoman Empire: The Legal Complications of Cosmopolitanism in the Eighteenth Century
Maurits van den Boogert
3. Pioneering in Southeast Asia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century
Anita van Dissel
4. Nodal Ndola
Robert Ross and Anne-Lot Hoek
PART II: NETWORKS
5. The Networks of Dutch Brazil: Rise, Entanglement and Gall of a Colonial Dream
Catia Antunes, Erik Odegard and Joris van den Tol
6. Networks of Information: The Dutch East Indies
Charles Jeurgens
7. Paramaribo: Myriad Connections, Multiple Identifications
Peter Meel
8. The Global Dutchman in Indonesian Waters
J. Thomas Lindblad
PART III: INSTITUTIONS
9. 'Not out of Love, but for Money and Profit': The Dutch-Japanese Trade from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
Wim Boot
10. Institutional Interaction on the Gold Coast: African and Dutch Institutional Cooperation in Elmina, 1600-1800
Henk den Heijer
11. Conflict Resolution, Social Control and Law-Making in Eighteenth-Century Dutch Sri Lanka
Alicia Schrikker
12. Curaçao: Insular Nationalism vis-à-vis Dutch (Post-)Colonialism
Gert Oostindie

Conclusion: Globalizing Empire: The Dutch Case
Jos Gommans

Further Reading
Index